An important Ottoman source has become available to researchers as part of the RCH’s 21st-Century Studies in Humanities series. The Mufassal Tahrir Defteri of the Sanjak of Segedin (1578) is the work of Miklós Fóti, junior research fellow at our institute.
The detailed survey register of the sanjak of Segedin (Szeged) from 1578 provides us the most comprehensive picture of the area as part of the Ottoman Empire. At the same time, it is a crucial source for the reconstruction both of the medieval and Ottoman settlement network which was only sporadically known after the repulsion of the Turks. Inhabitants recorded in the towns and villages reflect the profound and rapid demographic changes that followed the fall of the medieval Hungarian Kingdom. The book is an unusual defter-edition insofar as it gives – in the footnotes – the geographical data of the settlements from the other registers of Szeged.
